Learn to hack. Giving any employee a hazy equity offer with promises to "scale it up" is a bad idea. The better your prospects get the more she is likely to feel screwed. And the worse they get, the less motivating the prospect of continuing seems.

Any scaling equity package should be linked to dates and performance goals. You basically said you didn't want her to own the company unless it succeeded, when success was contingent on her.

Sounds like she trusted you. Then stopped trusting you. Then left a few months later. You screwed up. Go apologize.

She wasn't initially hired as an employee - it was more of a contract agreement to develop the beta, with the option to come on as a full partner if we were working well together.

It wasn't a hazy equity offer.

What was the partner option contingent on?

Why is "learning to hack" the answer here? Doesn't that leave this person with a startup with no team?

No one is saying learn to hack is the solution to the issue. Regardless of doing it alone, or finding a team, it'll be an invaluable tool. It'll help him play a more significant role if a team was formed.

Stop refuting everyone's opinion.

It's not part of the solution here. It's just a good investment if you are running a tech start-up.

For example, if there was another partner here that knew how to hack, but wasn't a nurse, I'd say: Learn as much as possible about health care - it's your industry.

Either learn to hack, or find others who are passionate about the idea who can hack. Rather than people who are passionate about a salary. But doing both is a good idea IMHO.

Would definitely help them manage developers in the future. The best manager I ever had couldn't write a line though.

You can be a sole founder you know. Works quite well :)

note that she took a pay cut because she wanted a greater stake in the company. does that fit with her not believing in it?

it does sound like she didn't have the experience or the maturity to whittle down to an achievable project, however. learn to code, maybe that plus this experience will make you a much stronger manager and designer next time around.

if I read it correctly she REFUSED to take a paycut.

you're absolutely right, I apologise.

Point remains that asking for equity does not fit with expectation of failure.